Hope

by Len Deighton

  So Werner had been Fiona’s contact all that time? The Department had painted Werner the deepest shade of black while using him as a key figure in one of the most risky, delicate and vital tasks they’d ever undertaken. ‘Jesus Christ, Werner. You. Fiona’s case officer?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to tell you. Not ever. You’ll keep it to yourself, won’t you? I thought perhaps Fiona would have confided in you, but I should have known better. She’s amazing isn’t she?’

  ‘Amazing,’ I agreed.

  ‘I saw her in some of the worst times,’ said Werner, his hand shielding his eyes as if he was seeing the past all over again. ‘She was suicidal at times. More than once I thought we’d have to grab her and run with her.’

  ‘Was there a contingency plan for that?’

  ‘No. No contingency plan. London said any emergency preparations would mean telling more people… and endangering her.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Good old London Central. They wouldn’t want to endanger her.’

  ‘Endanger her more,’ explained Werner, who could sometimes become surprisingly defensive about the callous antics of London Central. ‘How is Fiona? How is she now?’

  ‘Since we are exchanging confidences,’ I said. ‘I think she’s slowly coming unglued.’

  ‘Everyone says she’s fit and well and fully recovered.’

  ‘You asked me what I thought,’ I said. ‘I don’t enjoy saying it. The others only see her when she is putting on a show; I see her at home when her defences are down. I see her as she really is.’

  ‘Yes, I asked you,’ said Werner.

  ‘It’s largely the fact that she’s in such a vulnerable condition that gives me the strength to go on.’

  ‘With the marriage?’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong; I love her. I love her to distraction but I no longer find it easy to live with her. Does that sound crazy?’

  ‘How could I find that crazy? Do you think it’s easy living with Zena? She’s a spiteful egoistical nagger. And anyway I have always wanted to have a family. And Zena is determined not to have kids. But I love her; I can’t bear the idea of someone else being with her. When I’m not with her I think of her all the time.’

  Werner had never bared his heart like this to me. I didn’t know how to react to his confession. I looked away. I looked at the cupboard behind the bar where the booze was locked.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Werner. ‘Fiona never goes out of her way to give you a bad time, does she?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  ‘You say she’s not well. How can I doubt it? That night when we pulled Fiona out… that night of the shooting on the Autobahn. She was ill then – she was ill a long time before that. Fiona should have been hospitalized.’

  ‘That night – before we flew to California – she saw a doctor and the shrink too.’

  ‘Department people; ordered to put an okay rubber stamp on her and send her off for debriefing.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘What about you, Bernie? Maybe you should have seen the shrink too.’

  ‘Me? There’s nothing wrong with me, Werner.’ It came out too quickly and Werner noticed that.

  ‘You shot two men that night, Bernie. What do you know about them?’

  ‘Two hoodlums. One of them was Stinnes, the one we chased around Mexico; a hard-line Party man with a lot of deaths on his conscience if the file has got it right.’

  ‘And the other man?’

  ‘His side-kick?’

  ‘His name was Harry Kennedy,’ said Werner. ‘Canadian, someone said, but that may have been a cover. He was a doctor of medicine working in London. Then he wangled some temporary job here at the Charité in Berlin. Ardent lefty. Party member from a long time back.’

  I could tell from Werner’s voice that more was coming and that it was not going to be something to celebrate. But Werner was not enjoying being the bearer of bad tidings; his face had become as hard as stone and almost as grey. He wet his lips. ‘Go on, Werner,’ I said.

  ‘Kennedy was assigned to monitor Fiona.’

  ‘For the Stasi?’

  ‘And for Moscow. He made regular visits to East Berlin to see her. The Charité was just a cover. He met her in London first. They saw a lot of each other.’

  ‘Were they…?’

  ‘Yes, Bernie, they were.’

  At that moment I saw Werner’s face vividly. I saw the set of his mouth and that black moustache, the narrowed eyes and the bushy hair in which for the first time I saw strands of grey. But his words were not so clear: they rattled around in my head like loose marbles in an old tin can, and made as much sense. Yes, they were. Yes, they were. Yes, they were. What did Werner mean? I remembered shooting that man on the Autobahn. It was one of those few times when it’s necessary to waste an unsuspecting sitting target. No one likes that kind of ‘execution hit’, but it was in the line of duty. Once done I had never brooded about it.

  ‘I almost went along there unarmed,’ I told Werner. He nodded. By a bizarre stroke of fate I was carrying that night a massive Webley revolver that I’d found amongst my dad’s old possessions in a suitcase at List’s. My father’s army-issue hand-gun! I had rested the gun when I fired it, and in my mind’s eye I could recall my target. He was still and unsuspecting. This unknown man, this Dr Kennedy, this lover of my wife as I now know him to be, took my first shot in the chest. It must have punctured the heart. His heart: how well I had chosen my point of aim. That sort of slow heavy round, fired by an expert gunman, picks a man up, carries him along with its force and dumps him on the ground a lifeless bundle of rags. And I was an expert gunman.

  ‘There was a lot of shooting,’ I said. ‘That fellow Teacher was there with a 9mm, and that American bastard brought along a pump-handle shotgun.’

  ‘There was a lot of shooting. We’ll never be sure exactly what happened,’ said Werner. He got up, went to the bar and poured large measures of malt whisky into two of Lisl’s best cut-glass tumblers. Lisl allowed him to have the key of the cupboard because he was so damned abstemious. I downed the whisky he gave me in one gulp. I felt it blazing a trail through my insides.

  Werner sat down again. He scarcely sipped his whisky before putting it aside. ‘I’m sorry, Bernie,’ he whispered. ‘I thought about it, and I decided I had to tell you.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I burped softly and tasted the garlic from the potato salad. It was revolting.

  ‘I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else, Bernie.’ He was the only German who called me Bernie. I wondered why. ‘And I know you are big enough to see it from Fiona’s side too.’

  ‘It was serious then?’

  ‘Yes, it was very serious. Both of them. He wasn’t toying with her. It was the real thing.’

  ‘The real thing,’ I said, as I started to understand what I was hearing. ‘Not just a quick piece of grab-arse then?’

  ‘Don’t do that to yourself, Bernie.’

  ‘You did a great job on the Christmas tree, Werner.’ I got to my feet. Werner watched me warily but remained seated. ‘Did I tell you that?’

  ‘Yes, you did, Bernie. Thanks.’

  I reached for Werner’s whisky and downed it; downed it too quickly. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. ‘Thanks, Werner,’ I said, putting the empty glass back on the table beside him.

  ‘Any time, Bernie,’ he said grimly.

  I looked around the big room and it all looked different to the room I’d seen before. The women in their swirling dresses and the men in their flying coat-tails had departed, never to return. Ever since I was a child I had cherished this room, but now I knew I would never see it again without feeling the knife-thrust of my wife’s betrayal.

  10

  Hennig Hotel, West Berlin.

  I awoke in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat and with a headache that slowly sliced the top off my cranium if I remained still, and plunged red-hot pokers into my brain every time I moved. From the street below, there came the rumble of po
lice and ambulance sirens, and the ceiling of my little attic room was frantic with the jagged shapes of their flashing lights. I looked around and suffered a moment or two of disorientation before remembering where I was. I’d lain in this bed when suffering so many childhood afflictions: colds, whooping cough, chicken pox and measles. It was like revisiting my past.

  The phone started ringing. I grabbed it to stop the sound it made. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Bernard?’

  ‘Yes, who is it?’

  ‘Your wife, darling. How many women do you have calling you in the middle of the night?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. I just arrived home and I didn’t want to leave this until tomorrow.’

  ‘Leave what?’ The telephone was slippery in my sweaty hands.

  ‘Daddy has to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Now don’t be upset, Bernard. Promise me you won’t shout.’

  ‘I won’t shout,’ I said grimly. ‘Now will you please tell me what this is all about.’ My mouth was dry. I looked for the glass of water I’d had last night, but when I found it the water was finished.

  ‘I saw Frank tonight. He said you’d be in Berlin over Christmas. I didn’t realize that.’

  ‘I didn’t realize it myself.’

  ‘Frank has arranged to spend the Christmas holiday with his wife’s family in Yorkshire.’

  ‘He said he was just going to London for a couple of days,’ I said.

  ‘It’s to be a family get-together; they arranged it on the spur of the moment. His wife’s aunts from Australia were on holiday in Europe. It was an opportunity not likely to come again. Frank’s wife has been awfully sick. He said he felt bad about letting you down.’

  ‘And what does your daddy have to know?’

  ‘Billy has got that awful cough again. The matron at school says a break in the sun would do wonders for him.’

  ‘Is this anything to do with his safari park investment? The all-inclusive ten days in South Africa?’ Her father had recently bought shares in a travel company and was determined to get a generous share of freebies.

  ‘The Caribbean. They’ve given him a wonderful deal on a beach house in Jamaica for Christmas. A pool and cook and car and gardener and two maids are all included.’ She rattled it off like a tour guide.

  ‘Jamaica?’

  ‘I don’t have to go with them,’ said Fiona. ‘I could come to Berlin and be with you. It’s just that the children are delirious at the prospect and the sun would be good for them.’

  ‘Better you go with them,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ she said in a voice unmistakably lightened. ‘I feel bad at going there while you are working hard, and on your own.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. There’s no point in your kicking your heels in the hotel while I’m in the office all day.’

  ‘Will you work every day over Christmas?’

  I was going to snap back some wisecrack about Christmas not being a big holiday for the communists, but she’d been there. So I swallowed it and told her I loved her and asked her to kiss the children for me.

  ‘And I love you, Bernard,’ she said. ‘I adore you. And I miss you very much. You’re always so understanding. I’ll buy unsuitable presents for the children and say they are from you.’

  ‘Can you find toys unsuitable enough?’ I said. It was an ongoing joke that had originated with a plastic ‘death-ray’ gun I’d given Billy about five years ago. Daphne Cruyer had never stopped chiding me about giving my children ‘totems of violence’, and it had become part of Fiona’s Christmas banter. Cleverly phrased to be a joke about Daphne, there was always enough reproach to spill over on to me.

  I said goodnight, put the phone back on its rest, and sank back on to the pillow again. I’m not exactly certain of the order in which things happened next, but I know that Werner looked round the door and asked if I wanted anything. One of the maids brought me a tray with chicken broth and a toasted cheese sandwich. I couldn’t face it. Lida swooped down in a camel-hair coat and large velvet hat. I told her that perhaps the kid – Robin what’s his name – should monitor any developments arising from the DELIUS débâcle. Only then did Lida tell me that Robin had gone.

  ‘Gone where?’

  She hesitated and asked if I wanted anything from the tray of food at my bedside. She was hoping that I would not repeat the question, but when I did she said Robin had gone ‘over there’. Drüben meant only one thing, and Robin had no right to take off without my direct order. I was angry.

  ‘Perhaps I should get the doctor,’ said Lida, when I had finished telling her how much I disapproved of Robin’s disappearance. ‘Your face is very bad-looking.’ Even allowing for Lida’s English it was not reassuring.

  ‘Did he get a vehicle?’ I persisted.

  ‘The motor cycle that was used the other day.’

  ‘He signed for it?’

  ‘I’m only guessing it was him,’ Lida said. ‘Someone had copied the scribbled signature of the previous user.’

  ‘And said it was “a special arrangement for Mr Harrington” I suppose? Is this your doing, Lida?’

  ‘No, Herr Samson. I swear it is not. I would not help him to flout your authority. And anyway he is not experienced enough to go alone. It is dangerous for him.’

  ‘He’ll try to find that damned pastor,’ I told her.

  ‘The pastor is perhaps dead,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s hope so. Dead or in an intensive-care ward,’ I agreed. ‘But either way, anyone trying to locate him is going to walk straight into a bear trap.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said bleakly.

  I could see that Lida felt protective about the kid, but she was too German to have helped him defy me. ‘Okay, Lida,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to manage without him. It’s too late to bring someone else into this crisis. I’ll come into the office and we’ll sort it out.’

  ‘You must stay in bed, Herr Samson. You are too sick…’

  ‘You get back to the office, Lida. Someone must be there. I’ll see you in about an hour.’

  ‘You won’t go after him?’ she said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  I could see she was trying to think of some conclusive arguments that would persuade me not to try to extricate the kid from the mess he would undoubtedly get into over there in Allenstein. She knew the Stasi arrest teams were already in position, no doubt sitting patiently and twiddling their handcuffs. ‘Herr Harrington will place the blame to me,’ Lida said. ‘He’ll say I should have stopped you.’

  ‘If you send for a doctor, Lida, your job is on the line.’

  ‘I won’t send for a doctor, Herr Samson.’

  When Lida had gone, something Fiona had said on the phone came back to me. She’d said that Frank Harrington’s family liked to get together. It suddenly brought to mind the moment when Stefan Kosinski had leapt out of the bathroom. He’d said the Kosinski family kept together, or liked to keep together, or something of that sort. I’d let it pass at the time, but looking back on it I could see what he meant. Was he perhaps referring to a Kosinski family tomb to which the mortal remains of George Kosinski would be consigned? I’d seen no family tomb, neither had it ever been mentioned. Was the family tomb the answer to why George Kosinski had gone back to Poland? Poles liked to be buried in their homeland; there was no doubt about that. Was he going to die there? Or was it about burying his wife Tessa in Polish soil?

  With these fuzzy thoughts in my mind I dozed a few minutes more. Then I climbed out of bed and dressed myself very slowly. I felt dizzy and nauseated but I was sure that moving about and working would be rehabilitating. I steadied myself with one hand while getting my shoes on, and made sure my wallet and keys were in my pockets. When finally I was ready to face the world I went out through my little bedroom door, locked it and then turned round. The act of turning was all that was needed to bring on a sudden attack of dizziness, and I crumpled at the
knees and fell down the short steep flight of stairs. I heard a blood-curdling scream which I belatedly recognized was my own, then I landed at the bottom with a crash. I couldn’t move. I was upside-down on the narrow staircase with my legs twisted behind me. My face and arm hurt very much. I tried to reach out a hand, but that increased the pain and I blacked out.

  When I came round again I was back in bed and some moon-faced fellow was rubbing alcohol on my bare arm. He then proceeded to take a sample of my blood.

  ‘Hold still, Mr Samson. This won’t take a moment.’

  ‘Are you Dr Litzmann?’ I asked him.

  ‘Alas no. My name is Picard; I’m English. Major Picard; Royal Army Medical Corps.’ I recognized him as one of Frank’s drinking pals: Major ‘Picky’ Picard, the oldest surviving member of the British garrison. The plummy British accent, florid complexion, hair brushed tight against his head, loud and lumpy tweed suit with a battery of pens and pencils protruding from his waistcoat pocket, all contributed an element of the self-parodying Englishness to which the long-term exile sometimes resorts. Army, yes. The brisk manner of his professional attention was frequently found among doctors who had learned their trade tending battle casualties.

  ‘Did Lisl send for you?’ I said suspiciously.

  ‘I’m the departmental medical man for Mr Harrington,’ he said reassuringly, while devoting his attentions to the little red worm of blood that he’d just taken from my arm. ‘I’m army: I’m vetted. I do all the medical checks for you people.’

  ‘I’m not sick,’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got to rest, Mr Samson. No bones broken but you will be nothing but bruises by morning,’ he said, not without a certain relish.

  ‘I’ve got work that must be done.’ I eased back the bed cover as if to jump out of bed. He didn’t stop me; I suppose he knew that I hadn’t enough strength to blow my own nose.

  ‘Work to be done, but not by you,’ he said, rummaging through his case where I could see a large selection of nasty shiny implements. ‘You’re a civvie,’ he said as if I might have forgotten that. ‘I can put you into the Steglitz Clinic or I can let you rest here. Take your choice but there must be no question of your getting out of bed… not for three or four days. You’ve had a bad fall. As soon as you are fit enough I shall send you off for a couple of routine tests and a head scan. We mustn’t take chances.’